The Most Profitable Keyword Research Secret

Let me get one thing straight here, forget everything you’ve heard about SEO. Just forget about it. If you really want to understand the secret to truly effective SEO and even Facebook marketing, it’s all about keyword research. That’s right, I said it, keyword research. The secret is out of the bag. The truth is you can build the best backlinks, you can produce the best content, you can target the best platforms, but all of that would amount to flushing hard-earned money down the toilet if you get the keyword research portion of SEO and search engine marketing all wrong. They all turn on keyword research.

The problem with keyword research is that most online entrepreneurs screw this up. They really do. They fall for all sorts of comforting myths. They subscribe to all sorts of mistaken ideas regarding keyword research. It’s no surprise then that they stumble over and over again. They come up with otherwise high-quality websites that end up falling flat because these sites are based on faulty keyword research.

I don’t mean to scare you and I definitely don’t mean to discourage you. However, I need to spell all this out because I need to drive home the message that the stakes are very high. You cannot screw around with keyword research it’s like building a website, and by extension, your online business on faulty keyword research. It’s like building your home on quicksand. I hope you can see why that is a stupid idea.

The myth of high-volume keywords

As I mentioned earlier there are a lot of misconceptions regarding keyword research and this tends to poison most online entrepreneurs’ web marketing strategies. One of the most pervasive myths out there is that you need to focus on high-volume keywords if you want to have a chance at making money online. I’m telling you right now, if you build your website strictly on high-volume keywords, you’re going to end up wasting a lot of money, spending a lot of time and eventually losing money.

The vast majority of people that search the Internet using high-volume keywords are not in your target audience. Let me repeat that again: the vast majority of people that use high-volume keywords that may seem related to your niche are not in your target audience. These keywords are so open-ended that it’s anybody’s guess what they really are looking for. The last thing you want is to target those high-volume keywords and get a ton of traffic and end up spending a huge amount of money for little to no results.

The reality: less is more

The secret to effective keyword research is to wrap your mind around the fundamental fact that when it comes to SEO and targeted search marketing, less is more. I don’t mean to sound all Zen Buddhist on you, but this is the reality. The less traffic you get to a keyword, the higher the likelihood that that keyword is very, very targeted. The more targeted the keyword, the more obvious the intent of the people using that keyword will be. This leads to you making more money. Why? This is higher-quality traffic.

If somebody’s typing in a long-tail keyword, chances are their intent is clear. You can easily tell whether somebody is just looking for general information or if somebody is looking for a specific way to do something. Now once you’ve targeted people looking to do something you can then fine tune your keyword research to zero in on people who are looking to buy something. Do you see how this all fit into each other?

The last thing you want is to target ambiguous keywords that don’t reveal intent. You might end up barking up the wrong tree. You might end up showing the wrong ads to the wrong people. They couldn’t care less about your ads. They couldn’t care less about your solution. It’s really important to zero in on content. This is why keywords with lower volume tend to be higher in quality because their intent profile is more apparent.

Intent and interest pairing is crucial

Just because somebody is intent in looking for certain types of information it doesn’t automatically follow that you should target that keyword. You also have to focus on interest. What is this person interested in? What is this person’s purpose? Two people might be looking for lawyers that specialize in slip and fall injuries.

However one person is actually looking to sue a lawyer while the other person is looking to retain the services of a slip and fall injury lawyer. Now if you’re trying to promote a slip and fall injury lawyer you obviously going to target the second person. You’re not going to target the first person. This scenario highlights the importance of interest. You need to do your keyword research in such a way that you can get into the motivations of the person using that keyword.

Intent and trust

I’m sorry to break this to you, but there’s actually many different hoops that you have to jump through in selecting your keywords. Keyword research is not a “one and done” process. You have to go through several steps. Not only you have to look for people who are truly interested in whatever you’re offering, the next step is to pay attention to trust. Are these people looking to trust a solution?

This can get quite tricky because in many cases you have to show different set of ads for people who are interested in your solution but they might need further convincing. In this situation, the strategy is to get them to a certain page and then call them to action for pages where they can then trust your solution. Another alternative (ad retargeting or ‘remarketing’) would be to get them to load a pixel so you can then push them to a trust page. In fact, I highly suggest this latter strategy because it’s very important considering how pervasive ad retargeting is now.

Intent and conversion

The bottom line is to zero in on intent and convert that person. If you don’t pick the right people with the right intent, you’re never going to convert them. That’s the bottom line. The good news is you can profit more with less traffic; you just need to zero in on the right intent. There are two ways to do this.

First, you can get direct sales. What I mean by this is by getting the right ads in front of the right people because you targeted the right intent, these people jump directly to your sales page and you make a conversion. Congratulations, you have done something that happens only two percent of the time.

In the vast majority of situation people would see your conversion page, but they’re not ready. In this situation it’s much better to get them to your squeeze page. In other words, get them to sign up to your list. This way you get many bites at the apple and eventually when they’re ready to buy they can then click on your email and convert. That’s how it works.

You have to have a long-term strategy with keyword research. You can’t just look at keyword research as just something that just happens overnight. You can’t conduct your keyword research in such a way that you assume that as long as you get the right keywords these people would automatically convert. I wish that was the case.

You don’t want to find out the hard way.

Follow the tips above so you can come up with a keyword strategy and process that would yield the kind of results that you are looking for.